


Just Another Day

by SegaBarrett



Category: St. Elsewhere
Genre: Burnout - Freeform, Fear of Discovery, First time having consensual sex after rape, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Stress, handjobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 03:37:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18842839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Jack is working too hard. Victor wants to help him to relax.





	Just Another Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AnnetheCatDetective](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own St. Elsewhere, and I make no money from this.
> 
> A/N: Title from the Paul McCartney song.

Morrison couldn’t stop blinking. He figured that it had something to do with the fact that he had been working for thirty-six hours straight, but he didn’t feel tired. Not exactly, anyway. He was alert, fixated on a spot on the ceiling that seemed to be moving ever-so-slowly.

“Jack?” 

He turned his head on a swivel and rubbed at his nose and hair, trying desperately to look some sort of presentable. He was still on thin ice, after all, no need to start falling apart all over the hospital floor. Then they would be sure he wasn’t good enough.

“Yeah, Victor?” he managed in response, as his gaze narrowed in on the fact that it was indeed Victor Ehrlich speaking to him. What did he want? It seemed like Ehrlich was always a whirlwind of activity that Morrison could only dream of keeping up with. 

“Are you all right? You’ve been staring at the wall for at least ten minutes straight. I know, because I counted.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine. I was just thinking.”

He didn’t say what he had been thinking about, given that he didn’t totally remember. He wasn’t sure what he was thinking about right now, either. 

He was probably thinking about the fact that Victor Ehrlich shouldn’t be passing his mind nearly as much as he was, especially when Morrison had so many other crises to attend to. There was Pete, first and foremost – he had to make sure he was at the top of every decision made. Then there was getting his full license back, the up-hill battle where they seemed to keep moving the goal post.

And then, well, the things that went bump in the night. 

“Thinking about what?” Ehrlich asked, and Morrison let out a frustrated sigh. 

“About sleeping,” Morrison stated grumpily. 

“Aren’t we all? Did you know the average human thinks about sleep more than he thinks about sex?”

Morrison stared at Ehrlich.

“Thanks, just what I needed right now. A rerun of your Health Spot.” He said it with a smile. Ehrlich’s rambling was welcome. It kept a lot of other things out of his mind. 

“It’s true, Jack. These are basic urges that we are getting far too used to ignoring or pushing to the side. It’s really not healthy.”

Morrison was going to shove him, really shove him, if he didn’t shut up already. He was always irritable when he didn’t get enough sleep, because the energy to respond to anyone or anything or even just to keep his arms moving was going to kill him.

His pager beeped then, saving him from having to beat up Ehrlich. It was an amusing mental image, the two of them wrestling. Neither of them could probably fight to save their lives; it would be such a waste of energy. But maybe it could be cathartic.

The idea of Morrison fighting anyone was laughable, though. He hadn’t been able to fight when it mattered, and now everyone was acting like he was broken. Everyone looked at him as if they knew.

He should have transferred to another hospital, or maybe not even come back at all. 

As Morrison turned to open the door, he felt his foot slip and his head dip forward. 

“Jack!” Ehrlich exclaimed. His hand shot out in a flash, grabbing Morrison’s arm and pulling him back. “I think you need to sit down, Jack,” he said quietly. 

Morrison began to shake his head. If he was resting, then that was all the more reason for Westphall to tell him to sit this one out, to send him home. Even though he didn’t really have a home, not anymore.

“Oh, no, I’m fine,” Morrison said. He knotted his hands together and made it three feet out the door before crashing against the tile.

***

He woke up lying back on his bed, staring up at the ceiling with a groan.

“Nina?” he called first, before it all came back to him with a crash.

“No Nina. I’m not as pretty,” Ehrlich quipped. He poked his head down from the top bunk, staring at Morrison as Morrison tried to sit up and banged his head against the top bunk for the trouble. “Jeez, Jack, don’t! Just lay back down, okay? I think you have some sort of concussion.”

Morrison smiled wryly.

“What are you, a doctor?” he quipped.

In his head, he repeated that he knew it, he knew it, he knew it. He knew he had been pushing it too far. He wanted to crawl back home and lay in bed, but that would be defeat after all. He wasn’t sure that he could take any more defeat or he might just fall apart.

“I’m worried, Jack. It’s been… a lot of things for you, recently. It would be a lot for anyone.”

“So you think I should just roll over and die, then?” Morrison fired back. It was what he wanted to do, sometimes, passively, to simply let it all go since fate seemed destined to stomp on him again and again at any given opportunity. And hadn’t he earned the right, at this point? How much more did he owe to this place?

“No,” Ehrlich replied firmly. “I think you should take a rest for once, because you’re burning the candle… and at only one end, too! You’re like a rock star, but without all the actual fun and groupies and…”

“I get the idea.”

Morrison intended to say it in an annoyed way, but it came out with an odd chuckle. Ehrlich had that kind of effect on him, sometimes. 

And maybe he was right. But where was he supposed to take his own advice – the advice he would give to any exhausted patient, “don’t work so hard” – when he had to be in this insane hamster wheel in order to become a doctor in the first place?

Maybe it wasn’t even worth it. He was about to give voice to that when Ehrlich put a hand in his hair, his fingers wisping through the curls softly.

“You need to relax, Jack. Hit the road, Jack,” Ehrlich said with a chuckle, and Morrison sighed, breathing in the smell of him. Clinical, but oddly floral – how had he managed that when he was cutting people open all day? Victor Ehrlich, man of miracles.

Morrison cocked his head to the side and looked at Ehrlich. How was he supposed to look at anyone after what they all knew about him?

But Ehrlich wasn’t looking at him any differently. He was playing with him like he was still old Jack. Like he was still… Jack. Not a shattered, broken thing.

And that made him want to cry, because he was sure that he wasn’t. He was a Jack-shaped… something. How could he tell Ehrlich that, though?

“Victor… I appreciate it. But I really just need to…”

Ehrlich leaned in and pressed a kiss to Morrison’s lips. Morrison gasped; he thought that he would flinch if anyone tried that, and maybe he should have. He knew about trauma in the abstract sense – that would be the thing, right? Not to want to be touched.

To want to be alone.

Was it wrong that he didn’t feel that? That he found himself leaning into Ehrlich’s touch?

Hadn’t they covered that in med school? Maybe that had been one of the things he hadn’t successfully translated from Spanish. The hospital had probably been doing a mess of a job helping people like, like him, in his situation, Morrison realized suddenly, and he should probably get up to tell Westphall about it so that there would be something they could do.

A cause to cheer for, like it had nothing to do with him.

“Was that wrong?” Ehrlich asked him quietly.

Morrison shook his head. But how could he tell him that nothing had felt as right as this in a long, long time?

Not since Nina.

Morrison leaned his face in and kissed Ehrlich back before he let himself overthink it. He let his hand rest on Ehrlich’s shoulders and he shivered a little as Ehrlich, awkwardly, kissed him back.

Ehrlich pulled back. 

“Now, you will take my advice and you will get some rest, won’t you Jack? I mean statistically 67% of men…”

“Victor?”

“Yes?”

“Shut up.” Morrison kissed him again. “We’ll have to be pretty quiet, I think.”

“Quiet? Jack, are you saying what I think you’re saying, that it sounds like you’re saying?”

“We’ll have to be,” Morrison put his hands on each of Ehrlich’s thighs, one right after the other, and swallowed. “Pretty quiet.”

“Jack, you don’t need to do something like this. I mean, not for me, okay? I mean, trauma can be pretty…”

“Shut UP, Victor.” Now, Morrison began to fiddle with Ehrlich’s labcoat. “You should get this thing off as quickly as you can. I don’t think we’re going to have a lot of time.”

“Do you have a fever, Jack?” Ehrlich asked, but he moved to allow Morrison access, let him pull his shirt over his head, too.

“The only fever I have is… I need more cowbell,” Morrison replied.

“Oh, you’re joking. Now I think you really do have a fever,” Ehrlich said. “Jack…” He paused, then put a gentle hand on Morrison’s hips, seeming to test his reaction. “You’re really okay with this? I mean, considering the whole… massive trauma thing. I’d imagine that you wouldn’t want to go anywhere near…”

“I want to go near you. Now, get inside me before I change my mind, already,” Morrison snapped.

“Oooh, I like how… declarative you’re being,” Ehrlich said, unbuttoning his pants and pulling it off, before fishing open a drawer lazily and, easily, finding some medical lube. “I wonder how many people in this hospital use this for the same reason…”

“Victor! It’s cold in here,” Morrison complained, and Ehrlich chuckled.

“The sting of anticipation,” he said, beginning to lube himself up and try to get in position behind Morrison at the same time.

Morrison let out a sigh. He might be talking big, but he didn’t feel quite as ready as he was trying to sound. 

“Jack?”

How had Ehrlich managed to hear some of the conflict in his own head? Maybe he needed to learn to tell his brain how to shut up.

“Victor, I’m fine.”

“Then why is your hand shaking?” Ehrlich inquired, reaching down to place a hand over Morrison’s. He hadn’t even realized it was; when had that started? Was he just one breath away from falling apart, and what exactly was he supposed to do with that if he was? He wanted to do this – why wouldn’t his body just go ahead and cooperate already?

But good luck to him actually saying any of that.

Ehrlich squeezed his hand and whispered, “We can wait. It’s not like we’re in a big rush or something. We could even do it somewhere where we would have more time… like, you know, a bedroom. We could use mine…” Morrison felt Ehrlich’s face touch his gently – cheek to cheek.

And he wanted to cry.

“A bed sounds good… an actual bed.” He smiled shyly. “I want to touch you, though… or have you touch me. I don’t know, I…”

Ehrlich’s hand slid down to Morrison’s thigh again, before his fingers slowly walked their way around to his groin. 

“Is this okay?” he asked, and Morrison smiled, because it was very okay.

Ehrlich’s fingers were gentle, careful, and Morrison thought to himself that maybe that was what would make him such a good surgeon. His thoughts were airy, distracted, up on a cloud, and the building feeling of cresting over a wave almost surprised him.

“Well, Jack,” Ehrlich mused, “There you go.”

He was sleepy, dazed, happy. 

He rolled over, just a little bit, as the door creaked open.

“Really! You two? It was bad enough with Caldwell? Put a sock on the door or something.”

The sound of a door shutting again. 

“Was that Fiscus?” Ehrlich whispered. Morrison’s eyes went wide and he laughed against Ehrlich’s shoulder.

That felt good. He could get used to that.


End file.
